Five questions regarding the nature of
the moral sense, the origin of conscience, the development of morality,
variability in the moral sense, and the relation of morality to behavior are
examined from the point of view of four theoretical approaches (psychoanalytic
theory, social learning theory, cognitive-developmental theory, and evolutionary
psychology). In addition, some concepts and findings from outside the four
approaches are also touched upon. The moral sense is shown to be complex,
comprising cognitions, feelings, and behaviors. The theoretical approaches
disagree regarding the issues of whether conscience directly reflects social
teaching, or is constructed by the developing individual. They also disagree on
whether moral development is incremental or stagewise. Explanations of
individual, gender, and cultural differences in morality differ across the four
approaches. None of the approaches explains the relation of behavior to
morality; rather, application of social psychological theories is suggested.

INTRODUCTION

Questions of human morality have been
among the most vexing in all of psychology. The moral sense is so ubiquitous
that its lack is regarded as a pathological condition, but its bewildering
complexity and variability across persons, situations, and cultures has thwarted
efforts to construct a comprehensive psychological theory of morality. This
essay will attempt to summarize the main theoretical approaches and issues vying
for place as explanations of morality, and will touch briefly on some of the
important empirical findings.

Definitions. There is no single
agreed-upon definition for the term "moral" in the psychological
literature. However, as a practical point of departure, let us make use of an
adapted version of a dictionary definition: morality consists of the rules of
conduct based on conscience or the sense of right and wrong. This definition
immediately presents us with a number of psychological (and sociological)
questions.

1. What kind of "sense" is
the moral sense? What does it consist of?
2. How do we know right and wrong? Where does conscience come from? That is,
where do we get our knowledge of the rules and our feelings about them?
3. Does our moral sense change over time? If so, how and why?
4. Do all people have the same "sense" of right and wrong? If not, how
does it differ,
both across individuals and across cultures? What accounts for the variation?
5. To what extent do individuals behave according to their sense of morality?

It is in the attempt to answer these
and related questions that psychological theories of morality have been
formulated. In general, four approaches have dominated the field of morality:
(1) Freud's psychoanalytic theory; (2) learning theories, including social
learning theory; (3) cognitive-developmental theory; and (4) evolutionary
psychology. Some workers in the field, however, are not closely identified with
any of these approaches. The following will summarize the main answers that have
been proposed, along with some of the principal arguments for and against them,
taking each of the above questions in turn.

1. Aspects of morality. Asking
what kind of "sense" the moral sense is leads directly to further
questions, such as, is it knowledge of the rules, or feelings about right and
wrong actions, or use of the rules to guide actual behavior? The fact that each
of these questions appears to require an affirmative answer implies a complex
structure for conscience, a structure comprising (at least) cognitive aspects
such as knowledge and reasoning, moral feelings, and action or behavior. While
all the major theories of morality try to address all these aspects to some
extent, each of them takes a different aspect as seemingly the most basic. The
psychoanalytic theory of the superego focuses to a large extent on the moral
feelings of anxiety, shame, and guilt, generally ignoring cognitive and
behavioral aspects (Freud, 1924a, 1924b). Social learning and behaviorist
approaches place greatest emphasis on behavior, its consequences (direct or
vicarious), and its stimulus conditions, to the relative exclusion of thinking
and feeling (e.g., Bandura, 1977). Cognitive developmental theory is concerned
mainly with moral reasoning, to the relative neglect of feeling and action
(e.g., Piaget, 1932; Kohlberg, 1969). Evolutionary hypotheses, to the extent
that they take into account subjective states of the person, focus on feelings
as cues to action; however, this approach has so far concentrated on the
selective value of prosocial action and the possible mechanisms by which both
prosocial tendencies and social control tendencies may have been selected
through evolution (e.g., Trivers, 1971). An important exception to the tendency
to focus on a single aspect is the work of Hoffman (2000), whose theory ties
multiple aspects of morality together using the concept of empathy, and is not
easily classifiable into any of the other approaches.

In some ways, the psychoanalytic
approach has been a cornerstone for other types of research, in that the
capacity for moral feeling, particularly guilt, has been regarded as a crucial
indicator of the existence of conscience. However, the theoretical basis of
conscience in the working out of the Oedipal conflict has left the theory open
to attack by anthropologists who question the universality of the Oedipal
conflict (e.g., Malinowski, 1961); by learning theorists who see no need to
posit unconscious motivational processes as the basis of moral learning; and by
feminist theorists who reject Freud's assertion that males develop a stronger
conscience than females because of differences in the way they experience
castration anxiety. On the other hand, by grounding conscience in a specifically
sexual conflict, psychoanalytic theory is closer than other psychological
theories to popular conceptions that focus especially on sexual morality.

Social learning theorists have
demonstrated convincingly that children imitate social models' prosocial and
aggressive behaviors, and there is abundant evidence for the conditioning of
anxiety. However, the learning approach has had difficulty in accounting for
other moral feelings (shame and guilt) or for age-related changes in moral
reasoning and judgment. On the other hand, learning theory postulates no
essential content for moral rules, and is thus comfortable with the extreme
diversity of rules encountered across cultures.

Cognitive developmental theories,
particularly those of Piaget (1932) and Kohlberg (1969), have shown that moral
reasoning, based on the concepts of equality and reciprocity, changes in
predictable ways across the years of childhood and youth. Considerable
cross-cultural research indicates that the sequence of stages proposed by
Kohlberg is invariant, although the existence of all his stages in all cultures
is highly questionable (Snarey, 1985). This theory, however, has difficulty
explaining moral feelings, and evidence for a relationship between stages of
moral development and actual moral behavior is weak.

Evolutionary psychologists can point to
evidence from a variety of sources, from ethological studies (e.g., de Waal,
1996) to computer simulations (Axelrod, 1984), that reciprocity in prosocial
behavior confers selective advantages in a group-living species, particularly
when combined with a tendency to punish defections. Since evolutionary
psychology posits that feelings are the primary means of inducing adaptive
behavior (Johnston, 1999), it is open to explanations involving moral emotion
and motivation, although to date a full account has not been offered. The
modular theory of mind espoused by many evolutionary psychologists is also
potentially compatible with some of the ideas of cognitive-developmental theory,
but once again, an explicit connection between these approaches has yet to be
drawn.

As noted above, Hoffman's (2000)
approach accords relatively equal weights to aspects of feeling, cognition and
behavior, and may be regarded as an attempt to integrate the most important
insights of the four theoretical approaches. Hoffman's key concept of empathy,
which he regards as having an evolutionary basis, provides a basis for both
moral feelings and moral reasoning when combined with cognitive elements
supplied by social experience, particularly inductive disciplinary encounters.

2. The Source of Morality.
Theorists of several persuasions unite in asserting that conscience originates
outside the individual, in societal influences. Psychoanalysis pictures the
origin of the superego as a process of incorporation, almost literally a
"swallowing" of the parent's morality by the child. Although the
child's motivation for adopting adult morality is seen to lie in the internal
conflicts of the Oedipal stage, the moral sense itself is thought to be imported
from the outside.

Learning-based approaches likewise
posit environmental pressures, in the form of models, reinforcements, and
punishments, as elements that govern the acquisition of conscience. Both of
these theories share the term "internalization" as a description of
the origin of conscience, and both contrast internalized conscience with control
of behavior by outside agencies, such as parents or police. To a large extent
this model of internalization is also shared by most sociologists and
anthropologists, whose concept of socialization includes the acquisition of
morality under the tutelage or pressure of socializing agents such as parents,
teachers, and religious leaders. Even social constructionist theorists, who
emphasize the uniqueness of cultural meanings, implicitly assume that the
individual's morality stems from the culture.

Cognitive-developmental theory takes
exception to this dominant model, arguing that the child essentially creates his
or her own conscience on the basis of experience with relationships and
role-taking opportunities. This approach maintains that, just as the child's
thinking and use of logic develop through several stages, so moral reasoning
moves through stages that are progressively more complex and inclusive in scope.
For cognitive-developmental theory, the child does not simply take in or
internalize an external morality, but rather produces his/her own moral
understanding by constructing and re-constructing concepts of reciprocity and
equality. Thus, in contrast to the internalization theorists, Kohlberg is able
to posit a post-conventional or principled morality in some individuals which
may transcend the conventional morality presented to them by their social
surrounding.

Evolutionary psychologists see morality
as an inherited facultative trait - or, more likely, a set of such traits -
activated by particular kinds of social conditions and experiences. In this
sense they are close to the cognitive-developmental position but in even more
distinct opposition to the internalization model. Their assertion that morality
is part of the evolutionarily selected nature of humans has occasioned a great
deal of excitement among researchers, but as of this writing much remains to be
clarified in terms of specifying what sorts of conditions can be expected to
lead to which outcomes, and why.

Hoffman's model appears to be eclectic
in respect to the question of the origin of conscience. In his account of
moralization, he makes use of both internal cognitive and emotional dynamics in
the child as well as inductive reasoning and other disciplinary techniques
applied by parents, and although he makes frequent use of the concept of
internalization, he also credits the child's inherent and developing capacities
for empathy and reasoning as important factors.

3. Development of the Moral Sense.
All of the approaches under discussion here agree that conscience develops over
time; but, as is true in other domains of development, one of the most
persistent debates is over the question of whether morality develops in an
incremental, additive fashion or in a series of distinct and incommensurable
stages.

The concept of stage-wise development
is embraced by a majority of the theoretical approaches. Psychoanalytic theory
sees the formation of the superego as a watershed event in the development of
personality, so that the child is a fundamentally different entity after the
superego develops. Thus a different set of stages (pre- and post-superego) is
superimposed on and partially coincides with the psychosexual stages that are
thought to lay the basis for adult personality. As noted above,
cognitive-developmental theory proposes a set of stages in the development of
moral reasoning, ranging from the "premoral" through the
"conventional" and possibly through "postconventional."
Hoffman offers a set of stages for the development of empathy and also refers to
internalization in stage-like terms.

Each of these stage theories, however,
has a unique view of what the stages consist of, how they are different from one
another, and at what ages they emerge. Freud's superego development is seen as
occurring in early childhood, certainly by the age of seven, and the change
consists essentially in the child's internalizing the rules of morality, so that
what had previously been a conflict between the individual and society - the
conflict between gratification of the individual's selfish desires and the needs
of social order - becomes a conflict within the individual.

Piaget described the major moral stage
transition as taking place in late childhood, and it consisted of moving from a
"heteronomous" view of social rules to an "autonomous" one,
in which the child could adopt other points of view and see the rules as his/her
own. Kohlberg extended this early formulation to include adolescence and early
adulthood, and maintained that each stage consisted of a unique
conceptualization of the requisites of social interaction, with each successive
stage exhibiting greater cognitive complexity and a greater range of
perspectives taken into account.

Accounts of moral development based on
learning theory do not make use of the stage concept, but on the contrary, see
the learning of morality as essentially similar to any other type of learning.
That is, the incremental accumulation of incidents of social modeling, reward,
punishment, and classical conditioning of anxiety eventually add up to the
acquisition of morality. From this point of view, there is no necessary
direction of learning other than a progressively closer approximation to the
demands of the social surrounding. Although in practice changes in morality
might not be expected in adults, theoretically speaking, changes in moral
learning could take place at any time in life in response to new contingencies
of reinforcement.

Evolutionary psychology has not yet
taken a stand on the question of whether moral development occurs in stages or
incrementally.

4. Differences in the Moral Sense.
The problem of differences in the moral sense is actually several different
problems - individual differences, gender differences, and cultural differences,
to name only the most frequently discussed. Not every theoretical approach tries
to account for all of these types of difference, but each of them is the subject
of lively debate.

Individual differences have been
conceptualized in terms of severity of conscience (Freud), degree of
internalization (Hoffman), and stage attainment (Kohlberg).

Freud's somewhat paradoxical proposal
was that severity of conscience is inversely related to the severity of
punishment experienced by the child, explaining this phenomenon on the basis of
greater motivation to incorporate the rules represented by a more loving, less
punishing parent. Much later, cognitive dissonance theorists took up this theme,
suggesting that "insufficient external justification" for obeying the
rules leads the child to produce his/her own internal justification, i.e., a
belief in the rightness of the rules and his/her obedience (see, e.g., Aronson,
1999).

Learning theory approaches have no need
of a special explanation for individual differences in morality: each person has
a unique learning history, which in turn will produce variation across
individuals in terms of morality.

Hoffman's approach ties most individual
differences in moral internalization and capacity for guilt to differences in
disciplinary style of the parents (and to some extent other socialization
agents). In particular, he sees a power-assertive, punitive style as inimical,
and an inductive style of discipline as conducive to moral development. When
using inductive discipline, the parent calls the child's attention to the
negative consequences for others of the child's bad behavior, mobilizing both
empathy for others and recognition of responsibility for his/her own actions.
This in turn facilitates the child's development of guilt and self-regulation.

Cognitive-developmental theory
attributes most individual differences in morality to differences in stage
attainment. Such differences could be due to age or to the (lack of) role-taking
opportunities that have been encountered by the individual.

Since evolutionary psychology
conceptualizes morality as a set of facultative traits, differences across
individuals would be explained as primarily a result of differences in the
environmental circumstances encountered, possibly in a cumulative fashion.
Ironically, this view leads the two most opposite theories, evolutionary and
learning psychology, to take very similar positions on this question, at least
on a superficial level, although evolutionary psychology does posit some
constraints on the possible forms that moral rules may take.

Gender differences are clearly
predicted only by Freud's psychoanalytic theory, which maintains that the
greater intensity of castration anxiety experienced by males leads them to
develop a stricter conscience and greater capacity for guilt. However, this
prediction has not fared well in empirical research. Using criteria such as
obedience, confession of transgression, apparent guilt, and atonement for
transgression, observations of young children have typically produced the
opposite result: young girls show more signs of internalization of conscience
than young boys.

Another debate over gender differences
in morality was sparked by findings from some studies using Kohlberg's moral
reasoning interviews with adolescents and adults that males tended to be placed
in higher stages than females. Gilligan (1982) asserted that this tendency
actually reflected female use of what she called a care perspective, in contrast
to the justice perspective embodied in Kohlberg's theory and measurements. Later
research has shown that both males and females make use of both perspectives,
depending on the circumstances. Also, surveys of the literature have shown that
males and females do not generally have different placements on Kohlberg's
stages; if anything, there is a tendency for females to have higher scores on
some measures of moral reasoning (see, e.g., Moon, 1986). However, the
identification of the care perspective has added a new dimension to
psychological concepts of moral reasoning, and it has been important in some of
the cross-cultural debates.

Cultural differences in the
rules of morality are so large and pervasive that cross-cultural psychologists
debate whether they are differences of degree or of kind. Shweder and his
colleagues (see, e.g. Shweder, Mahapatra & Miller, 1990) have denounced
Kohlberg's cognitive-developmental theory as applying only to Western societies
with individualistic social forms and liberal values. Along with other
researchers, they have demonstrated that some of the criteria for moral judgment
employed in some collectivistic cultures outside of western cultural traditions
are not anticipated in Kohlberg's scoring system and may, they contend,
erroneously lead to artificially lower placements for respondents who use them
(see also Snarey, 1985). These criteria bear a close resemblance in some cases
to the "care" ethic proposed by Gilligan.

The critique offered by social
constructionists is, however, more fundamental than simply a criticism of a
particular theory; its main point is that each culture is unique, with its own
meanings and moral system, so that comparison is in a real sense impossible.
They stand alone on this point, however. All other theories of morality have at
least some universalistic elements.

Psychoanalytic theory posits little in
the way of universal moral content, other than a prohibition on incest. However,
the mechanism of internalization, rooted in the fundamental conflict between the
desires of the individual and the requirements of social life, is seen as
universal. As noted above, this assumption has been challenged by ethnographers.

Social learning theory also posits no
particular moral content, but the processes of internalization (learning) are
regarded as essentially the same in all humans. Cognitive developmental theory,
in contrast, implies that both the processes of moralization and the bases of
moral judgment, as they reflect basic and universal psychological processes,
should be similar in all cultures. The wide cultural differences that are
empirically observed are explained either on the basis of a distinction between
morality and convention (Turiel, 1983) or on the basis of restricted role-taking
opportunities in isolated cultural groups (Kohlberg, 1969).

Evolutionary psychology also predicts
underlying patterns of cross-cultural similarity, such as the norm of
reciprocity which is found universally (Gouldner, 1960). In addition, this
approach makes a number of predictions about the possible forms of rules
governing sexual behavior, in this respect bringing it closer to psychoanalytic
theory than to the other approaches. The modular model of mental processes
allows the evolutionary approach to deal with multiple aspects of morality,
including fairness or justice, care, and sexual behavior within a single theory.
This affords it an inclusiveness not found in any other approach. Although the
recent identification of some aspects of moral judgment and self-regulation in
terms of moral values with specific brain areas (e.g., Damasio, 1994) is
indirect evidence in favor of this approach, a "grammar" of morality
still remains to be articulated. Ridley (1996) and Haslam (1997) have addressed
possible directions that the evolutionary theory of morality is likely to take
in the near future.

5. Behavior and conscience.
Evidence on this question comes more from social psychology than from work
inspired by any of the theories of morality. An early study by Hartshorne and
May (1929) showed clearly that preadolescent children are in full command of
moral knowledge - that is, they know the rules of morality quite well - but that
their adherence to the rules depends heavily on the circumstances, in terms of
incentives, anonymity, personal goals, and the like. Work done within the
cognitive-developmental framework also shows only weak connections between moral
reasoning and behavior (with the possible exception of persons at Kohlberg's
highest stage; see Kohlberg, 1969 and Haan, Smith & Block, 1969).

Social institutions, including
families, appear to share some of the assumptions of learning theory, such as
that good examples, rewards for good behavior, and punishment for bad behavior
will serve to increase compliance to the rules of morality. There is some
laboratory evidence for these assumptions, particularly with regard to prosocial
behavior and aggressive behavior. On the other hand, the persistence of
naughtiness in children despite punishment, of crime despite prisons, or even
capital punishment, and religiously-defined sin despite social ostracism or
expectations of eternal damnation suggest that other contingencies also need to
be taken into account. Perhaps chief among these is the very definition of
temptation: the direct or indirect reward value of the non-compliant behavior in
comparison to the reward value of compliance.

As noted above, cognitive dissonance
theorists have shown that self-regulated compliance with rules is associated
with "insufficient" external justification. Batson and his colleagues
(see Batson, 1991) and Hoffman (summarized in Hoffman, 2000) have shown that
performance of prosocial acts, or refraining from harmful acts, is facilitated
by activation of empathy for the other party. Zimbardo (1970) and others have
shown that anonymity or deindividuation sharply reduces the person's adherence
to social or moral rules that are ordinarily followed under other circumstances.
Self-awareness theory has shown that moral rules are more likely to be followed
to the extent that they are made salient, even in indirect fashion by making the
person more self-aware in general (e.g., Duval & Wicklund, 1972). Several of
these findings are congruent with the more general conclusion of social
cognitive theorists that consistency between behavior and attitudes or values
depends to a large extent on accessibility of the attitude, whether it is due to
priming, frequent use, centrality, or some other factor.

In summary, knowledge of moral rules,
or even ability to reason about moral action, appears to have less predictive
value for behavior than situational factors such as immediate reinforcement
contingencies, the social situation (including the social visibility of the act
and the behavior and expectations of others), feelings such as empathy, guilt,
and self esteem, and the cognitive salience of moral values.

Diane Sunar received her Ph.D. from the
University of California at Berkeley. Her research interests and publications
have clustered around stereotyping in power relationships; the psychology of
justice and morality; child rearing practices and their correlates; and early
childhood intervention. She teaches at Istanbul Bilgi University and Bogazici
University.

Questions for Discussion

1. What are the implications for child
rearing and educational practices of assumptions about whether the origin of
conscience is essentially external or internal?
2. Most psychological investigations of morality have focused on issues of rule
following, exchange, fairness, and the welfare of the self and others, generally
ignoring issues of sexual morality. In contrast, popular conceptions of morality
tend to focus strongly on sexual issues. How can social concerns with the
regulation of sexuality be integrated with psychological approaches to the study
of morality?
3. Discuss similarities and differences among the moral feelings or emotions of
guilt, shame, anxiety, obligation, and responsibility.
4. To what extent is empathy a personal disposition, and to what extent can it
be fostered by situational factors?
5. What kinds of evidence would help us to decide between incremental and stage
models of moral development?
6. Differences in the moral sense between individuals within the same culture
tend to be interpreted in terms of "higher" or "lower"
levels of internalization, development, or the like; however, differences in
moral conceptions or practices between cultures tend to be interpreted
relativistically. Can these two approaches be reconciled?